In the 1700’s, natural history played an essential part in constructing the western view of the east and its inhabitants. Based on this assumtion, the primary aim of this study has been to examine how two of Carl Linaeus’ apostles (Petrus Forsskål and Fredric Hasselquist) wrote about their specific cultural encounters while travelling.   In its essence, the results of the study has been that Mary Louise Pratts  previous writings are applicable also on the travel writings of Forsskål och Hasselquist. Altough with a few significant deviations. For example it seems that the apostles considered the native history more relevant than what Pratts theory would give them credit for.

This work deals with a theme, which is increasingly becoming popular amongst scholars. It is a theme dealing with Russian pilgrims and travellers, who visited the areas of the Middle East, especially those places, such as Constantinople, the Holy Land, Mt. Athos and others. Under the designation Russian pilgrims we do not mean individuals belonging to a specific ethnic group, but individuals who were related to Russia understood as a political formation and state. The contacts between the south and Russia, have important consequences for the development of Russia itself, its culture, identity and history. This is also the case for the Middle East, where the contacts with Russia determined to a large extent the development and character of this area. The Russian contacts with the south should be primarily viewed in terms of the Byzantine-Russian context. These were based on cultural influences and on a shared faith and identity. The cultural and religious contacts were enabled by travelling individuals, who travelled without and with a specific goal. In the context of these journeys the prime motivation was a religious one, when a pilgrimage to such areas as Constantinople, Mt. Athos, the Holy Land, helped to build a religious identity in Russia, since before the fall of Constantinople, religion...

This thesis is a study of factory owner Abraham Abrahamson Hülphers’s collections of parish description about the parishes in Norrland, more specifically those about Medelpad and Ångermanland. The thesis seeks to explain how Hülphers’s collections were created in practice while also presenting the descriptions content and analysing the ideology it reproduced. It does so by analysing Hülphers’s published descriptions, his travel journal and some of his correspondence. The thesis uses Mary Louise Pratts ideas about the imperial gaze as a theoretical framework to understand the work of Hülphers and the relation between the enlightened middle class and the peasantry which they described. The thesis investigates the idea of the parish descriptions understood as Hülphers travel journal reworked, arguing that Hülphers journey through Norrland was important for social reasons, rather than information gathering, and presenting the collections as new texts, not transformed versions of the journal. Furthermore the thesis discusses who helped Hülphers create the descriptions and the impact these men, from the same enlightened middle class as Hülphers himself, had on the text. The thesis also handles the economic ideology of the enlightenment as mirrored and reproduced by the descriptions. Here the focus lies on the priorities of the parishes different lines of work and the boundless optimism of enlightenment man – as nature could be conquered completely by man’s reason. Finally the thesis discusses the way Hülphers described the local culture; what he considered to be virtues and vices in the peasant population in terms of habits, language and dress, also showing the great value he considered the local dignitaries to have and discussing his disdain towards the superstitions of old as these could lead a community towards chaos.

This study examines the value of travellers’ written records of their trips with specific reference to the journals of five French travellers who visited Scotland between 1780 and 1830. The thesis argues that they contain material which demonstrates the merit of journals as historical documents. The themes chosen for scrutiny, life in the rural areas, agriculture, industry, transport and towns, are examined and assessed across the journals and against the social, economic and literary scene in France and Scotland. Through the evidence presented in the journals, the thesis explores aspects of the tourist experience of the Enlightenment and post -Enlightenment periods. The viewpoint of knowledgeable French Anglophiles and their receptiveness to Scottish influences, grants a perspective of the position of France in the economic, social and power structure of Europe and the New World vis-à-vis Scotland. The thesis adopts a narrow, focussed analysis of the journals which is compared and contrasted to a broad brush approach adopted in other studies.